Thinking Sphinx group options

Ok so i have 4 models that I am searching on in one search like this

#category model
define_index do
  indexes :name, :description, :tag
  indexes sub_categories.name, :as => :subcategory_name
end

#pattern model
define_index do
  indexes :name, :tag_name, :reference
  indexes colorways.filename, :as => :color_name
end

and so on.... I also have a searches controller that calls them all by this command

@results = ThinkingSphinx.search params[:search], :page => params[:page], :per_开发者_Go百科page => 25

I need to group the results based on the model so for example i want all the graphic results first then the categories and then the subcategories together so in my view i can have all the graphics together and the categories together.....any ideas on the best way to group or sort these by objects...

There's two approaches... firstly, Thinking Sphinx stores a CRC'd version of the class name as an attribute, so you can ask Sphinx to sort by that:

ThinkingSphinx.search params[:search],
  :page     => params[:page],
  :per_page => 25,
  :order    => 'class_crc ASC, @relevance DESC'

However, this doesn't enforce a specific order (you mentioned you want Graphic results first) - so you may want to consider a different approach - adding a manual attribute to each index definition with an integer determining the order:

has '1', :as => :model_order, :type => :integer

Change the 1 to 2, 3, etc for each index definition depending on where you want it in the search results. And then searching looks like this:

ThinkingSphinx.search params[:search],
  :page     => params[:page],
  :per_page => 25,
  :order    => 'model_order ASC, @relevance DESC'

Hopefully one of those two options suits what you're after.

A quick and dirty way is to use group_by and the model class name:

@results.group_by(&:class)

But it probably won't work well for large result sets. For that, you might consider adding the model name as a column in each table, and do the grouping using ThinkingSphinx as described in the docs.